[B]ut for the unfortunate
characteristic of this "self-indulgent" age, in which "nothing is
more common than to hear men warmly supporting a theory in the
abstract without any intention of submitting to it in practice,"
we should all be vegetarians. For, why should it be otherwise when
Sir Henry Thompson calls it "a vulgar error" to suppose that flesh
foods are indispensable for our sustenance, and the most eminent
physiologists declare that fruit is the natural food of man, and
when we have the example of Buddha, Pythagoras, Plato, Porphyry,
Ray, Daniel, Wesley, Howard, Shelley, Sir Isaac Pitman, Edison,
Sir W. B. Richardson, and a host of other eminent men as
vegetarians. The Christian vegetarians claim that Jesus was also a
vegetarian, and there does not seem to be anything to oppose that
view, except the reference to His having eaten broiled fish after
the Resurrection. The most successful missionaries in South Africa
(the Trappists) are vegetarians. Looked at from every point of
view, vegetarianism has been demonstrated to be far superior to
flesh-eating. The Spiritualists hold, and the practice of the
religious teachers of all the religions, except, perhaps, the
generality of Protestant teachers, shows that nothing is more
detrimental to the spiritual faculty of man than the gross feeding
on flesh. The most ardent vegetarians attribute the agnosticism,
the materialism, and the religious indifference of the present age
to too much flesh-eating and wine-drinking, and the consequent
disappearance, partial or total, of the spiritual faculty in man.
Vegetarian admirers of the intellectual in man point to the whole
host of the most intellectual men of the world, who were
invariably abstemious in their habits, especially at the time of
writing their best works, to demonstrate the sufficiency, if not
the superiority, of the vegetarian diet from an intellectual
standpoint. The columns of the vegetarian magazines and reviews
afford a most decisive proof that where beef and its concoctions,
with no end of physic thrown in, have lamentably failed,
vegetarianism has triumphantly succeeded. Muscular vegetarians
demonstrate the superiority of their diet by pointing out that the
peasantry of the world are practically vegetarians, and that the
strongest and most useful animal, the horse, is a vegetarian,
while the most ferocious and practically useless animal, the lion,
is a carnivore. Vegetarian moralists mourn over the fact that
selfish men would—for the sake of gratifying their lustful and
diseased appetite—force the butcher's trade on a portion of
mankind, while they themselves would shrink with horror from such
a calling. They moreover lovingly implore us to bear in mind that
without the stimulants of flesh foods and wine it is difficult
enough to restrain our passions and escape Satan's clutches, and
not to add to those difficulties by resorting to meats and drinks
which, as a rule, go hand in hand. For, it is claimed that
vegetarianism, in which juicy fruits find the foremost place, is
the safest and surest cure for drunkenness, while meat-eating
induces or increases the habit. They also argue that since
meat-eating is not only unnecessary but harmful to the system,
indulgence in it is immoral and sinful, because it involves the
infliction of unnecessary pain to and cruelty towards harmless
animals. Lastly, vegetarian economists without fear of
contradiction, assert that vegetarian foods are the cheapest diet,
and their general adoption will go a long way towards mitigating,
if not altogether suppressing, the rapidly growing pauperism side
by side with the rapid march of the materialistic civilization and
the accumulation of immense riches in the hands of a few.

Vegetarianism as Moral
Choice

When I received the
invitation to be present at this meeting [the London Vegetarian
Society], I need not tell you how pleased I was, because it
revived old memories and recollections of pleasant friendships
formed with vegetarians. I feel especially honoured to find on my
right Mr. Henry Salt. It was Mr. Salt's book, A Plea for
Vegetarianism, which showed me why, apart from a hereditary
habit, and apart from my adherence to a vow administered to me by
my mother, it was right to be a vegetarian. He showed me why it
was a moral duty incumbent on vegetarians not to live upon
fellow-animals. It is, therefore, a matter of additional pleasure
to me that I find Mr. Salt in our midst.

I do not propose to take
up your time by giving you my various experiences of
vegetarianism, nor do I want to tell you something of the great
difficulty that faced me in London itself in remaining staunch to
vegetarianism, but I would like to share with you some of the
thoughts that have developed in me in connection with
vegetarianism. Forty years ago I used to mix freely with
vegetarians. There was at that time hardly a vegetarian restaurant
in London that I had not visited. I made it a point, out of
curiosity, and to study the possibilities of vegetarian
restaurants in London, to visit every one of them. Naturally,
therefore, I came into close contact with many vegetarians. I
found at the tables that largely the conversation turned upon food
and disease. I found also that the vegetarians who were struggling
to stick to their vegetarianism were finding it difficult from [a]
health point of view. I do not know whether, nowadays, you have
those debates, but I used at that time to attend debates that were
held between vegetarians and vegetarians, and between vegetarians
and nonvegetarians. . . . Then vegetarians had a habit of talking
of nothing but food and nothing but disease. I feel that is the
worst way of going about the business. I notice also that it is
those persons who become vegetarians because they are suffering
from some disease or other—that is, from purely the health point
of view—it is those persons who largely fall back. I discovered
that for remaining staunch to vegetarianism a man requires a moral
basis.

For me that was a great
discovery in my search after truth. At an early age, in the course
of my experiments, I found that a selfish basis would riot serve
the purpose of taking a man higher and higher along the paths of
evolution. What was required was an altruistic purpose. I found
also that health was by no means the monopoly of vegetarians. I
found many people having no bias one way or the other, and that
nonvegetarians were able to show, generally speaking, good health.
I found also that several vegetarians found it impossible to
remain vegetarians because they had made food a fetish and because
they thought that by becoming vegetarians they could eat as much
lentils, haricot beans, and cheese as they liked. Of course, those
people could not possibly keep their health. Observing along these
lines, I saw that a man should eat sparingly and now and then
fast. No man or woman really ate sparingly or consumed just that
quantity which the body requires and no more. We easily fall a
prey to the temptations of the palate, and, therefore, when a
thing tastes delicious, we do not mind taking a morsel or two
more. But you cannot keep health under those circumstances.
Therefore, I discovered that in order to keep health, no matter
what you ate, it was necessary to cut down the quantity of the
food and reduce the number of meals. Become moderate; err on the
side of less, rather than on the side of more. When I invite
friends to share their meals with me, I never press them to take
anything except only what they require. On the contrary, I tell
them not to take a thing if they do not want it.

What I want to bring to
your notice is that vegetarians need to be tolerant if they want
to convert others to vegetarianism. Adopt a little humility. We
should appeal to the moral sense of the people who do not see eye
to eye with us. If a vegetarian became ill, and a doctor
prescribed beef-tea, then I would not call him a vegetarian. A
vegetarian is made of sterner stuff. Why? Because it is for the
building of the spirit and not of the body. Man is more than meat.
It is the spirit in man for which we are concerned. Therefore,
vegetarians should have that moral basis—that a man was not born a
carnivorous animal, but born to live on the fruits and herbs that
the earth grows. I know we must all err. I would give up milk if I
could but I cannot. I have made that experiment times without
number. I could not, after a serious illness, regain my strength
unless I went back to milk. That has been the tragedy of my life.
But the basis of my vegetarianism is not physical, but moral. If
anybody said that I should die if I did not take beef-tea or
mutton, even under medical advice, I would prefer death. That is
the basis of my vegetarianism. I would love to think that all of
us who called ourselves vegetarians should have that basis. There
were thousands of meat-eaters who did not stay meat-eaters. There
must be a definite reason for our making that change in our lives,
for our adopting habits and customs different from society, even
though sometimes that change may offend those nearest and dearest
to us. Not for the world should you sacrifice a moral principle.
Therefore the only basis for having a vegetarian society and
proclaiming a vegetarian principle is, and must be, a moral one. I
am not to tell you, as I see and wander about the world, that
vegetarians, on the whole, enjoy much better health than
meat-eaters. I belong to a country which is predominantly
vegetarian by habit or necessity. Therefore, I cannot testify that
that shows much greater endurance, much greater courage, or much
greater exemption from disease. Because it is a peculiar,
personal thing. It requires obedience, and scrupulous obedience,
to all the laws of hygiene.

Therefore, I think that
what vegetarians should do is not to emphasize the physical
consequences of vegetarianism, but to explore the moral
consequences. While we have not yet forgotten that we share many
things in common with the beast, we do not sufficiently realize
that there are certain things which differentiate us from the
beast. Of course, we have vegetarians in the cow and the
bull—which are better vegetarians than we are—but there is
something much higher which calls us to vegetarianism. Therefore I
thought that during the few minutes which I give myself the
privilege of addressing you, I would just emphasize the moral
basis of vegetarianism. And I would say that I have found from my
own experience, and the experience of thousands of friends and
companions, that they find satisfaction, so far as vegetarianism
is concerned, from the moral basis they have chosen for sustaining
vegetarianism.